Email peering (Was: Economics of SPAM [Was: Micorsoft's Sender IDAuthentication......?]

Thu Jun 16 17:36:48 UTC 2005

Far not, I have nothing to add on the "e-mail peering" hand-waving,  
but...

On 2005-06-16, at 11:49, Michael.Dillon at btradianz.com wrote:

>>> If the BGP peering side of the business can sort out all of
>>> this stuff, then why can't the email side of the business do
>>> the same, or perhaps, do even better?
>>
>> It's not comparable, as has been explained several times to you.
>
> Perhaps you have never been involved in BGP peering? Let
> me explain what the BGP peering side of the business does,
> in addition to operating BGP sessions with peers. To start
> with, most ISPs don't start peering until after they have
> negotiated and agreement. Those agreements are legal contracts
> with many pages specifying the responsibilities of the two
> parties, limits on how the technology is to be applied,
> SLAs, processes for interoperation and communication between
> NOCs, i.e. the people protocols.

... this (above) is vastly different to my experience.

At ISC we have between 1000 and 2000 BGP sessions active at exchanges  
around the world. I can count the number of those that required  
signed peering agreements on two hands.

Of those that did require paperwork, most were very happy to set up  
BGP sessions straight away, without waiting for the contracts to be  
signed and mailed. (If there are any such people watching, to whom I  
never got around to sending you a signed contract back, please let me  
know, and sorry :-)

Unless I am just very special, and some natural law protects me from  
mountains of legal paperwork which everybody else is obliged to  
climb, BGP peering is a lot more free and loose in real life than you  
suggest.

Joe